Political scientist and media critic

April 03, 2012

The Obama administration's first scandal: GSA spending

The first Obama scandal has arrived.

Last May, I wrote a column on how the Obama administration had managed to avoid scandal* for longer than we might otherwise expect:

My research (PDF) on presidential scandals shows that few presidents avoid scandal for as long as he has. In the 1977-2008 period, the longest that a president has gone without having a scandal featured in a front-page Washington Post article is 34 months – the period between when President Bush took office in January 2001 and the Valerie Plame scandal in October 2003. Obama has already made it almost as long despite the lack of a comparable event to the September 11 terrorist attacks. Why?

I attributed Obama's resilience in part to "the number and magnitude of competing news stories" during his tenure, which I show play a key role in the likelihood and severity of presidential scandal (PDF). (See Jonathan Alter's Washington Monthly piece for a discussion of other possible explanations.) However, I predicted that the "the likelihood of a presidential or executive branch scandal before the 2012 election are quite high" and that, "[g]iven Obama’s reputation for personal integrity, the controversy will likely concern actions taken within the executive branch."

Obama survived for longer than I expected since that column was published. Despite close calls with Solyndra and Operation Fast and Furious, Obama broke George W. Bush's record in October for the longest scandal-free period among presidents in the contemporary era using the measure described above from my research (a front-page Washington Post story focused on a scandal that describes it as such in the reporter's own voice) -- see Elspeth Reeve's coverage at The Atlantic Wire here and here.

Today, however, my predictions were validated when the Washington Post published a front-page story that twice describes a controversy over alleged excessive spending at a General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas as a "scandal." In print, the story ran under the headline "GSA rocked by spending scandal" (PDF). While this controversy seems unlikely to have much staying power or to damage Obama politically, its emergence is consistent with the news cycle theory I advance -- the improving economy and Mitt Romney's impending triumph in the Republican presidential nomination race have reduced the newsworthiness of two stories that have dominated the news in recent months, which in turn increases the likelihood that allegations of unethical or improper behavior will receive prominent coverage. The question now is whether the GSA controversy signals the resumption of scandal politics as usual in Washington.

* I define scandal as a widespread elite perception of wrongdoing. My research analyzes the effects of political and media context on when scandals are thought to have occurred, not whether Obama or other presidents actually engaged in misbehavior (a question that cannot easily be measured or quantified objectively).

Comments

Though it's not relevant to the thrust of Brendan's post, let me note that Bob Peck, whose agency held the conference at issue and who lost his job as head of the Public Buildings Service yesterday, is as fine a public servant as you could hope to find. I'm proud to say he's been a good friend for more than forty years.

I agree with Brendan that this scandal* will have little staying power. First of all, there's no controversy. Everyone from the President and GSA Chief on down agree that spending on this conference was excessive. Second, it's incredibly minor to waste a few hundred thou on a conference, as compared with giving $500,000,000 to an Obama supporter to piss away (and Solyndra wasn't the only one) or helping Mexican drug gangs commit dozens of murders.

Why did this tiny event become a scandal*, when the much more significant Solyndra and Fast and Furious didn't? Brendan credits his News Cycle Theory. I'll stick with media bias. The liberal media are willing to call a virtual non-event a "scandal", but IMHO they'll continue to downplay the real scandals.

David in Cal:
Yeah, "liberal media"!! How is the media liberal when it is owned by corporations? Entities that have disliked the Democratic Party since at least the time of FDR? Do you mean Brian Williams, the admitted Dittohead? Diane Sawyer, the flunky for "Tricky" Dick Nixon? Or the "liberal media" that treats Eddie Munster(aka Paul Ryan) as a VSP despite him being a buffoon? Just because you assert the media is liberal doesn't make it so.

Imagine that President George W. Bush had lectured the Supreme Court on their duties, in a dramatic speech in which he misstated most of the key facts about the seminal case, Lochner v. New York. Suppose that Bush had even questioned whether the Supreme Court had the power to review and overturn federal laws they found unconstitutional. If Bush had done that, all the media would have given him a horse laugh. Major newspapers would have run editorials blasting a President as being so ignorant of basic Consitutional Law and blasting him for presuming to tell the SC how to do their job and for blasting him for ignoring the Constitution's balance of power.

When President Obama made these errors, it should have been even more striking and newsworthy, since he has taught Constitutional Law. Yet, I didn't see much coverage of the President's gaffes, except by right wing media.

For those who do not subcribe to the on-line WSJ, a free copy of the Peggy Noonan article that Brendan referred to in the sidebar is available here.

Brendan argues that it would take mind-reading for Peggy Noonan to know that the coming election fully occupies President Obama's mind. However, the column supports this POV by showing (or trying to show) that the President's behavior indicates what is occupying his mind. In other words, although Noonan uses the phrase "Obama's mind", the column is really about what he's doing now and what she expects him to do between now and November.

According to the Obama Administration, this wasn't the first Obama scandal, it was the most recent Bush scandal.

The administration also argued Friday night that the cost of the Western Regional Conference increased sharply under the Bush White House -- from $93,000 in 2004 to $323,855 in 2006 to $655,025 in 2008, then $840,616 in 2010, or just 28 percent under Obama.

I agree with the post above...GSA Conference spending went from $93K in 2004 to $655K in 2008, so the increase in spending year over year was already in place.

Unlike the partisan headline form Fox about "pushing blame" it's the reality of context. It's kind of like them railing against Obama for taking vacation days in his first 3 years when Reagan and W took two to three times as many days off in the same period...